Losing Adam by Adrienne Clarke 💕 Book Blitz & Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Contemporary Romance)
What happens when the person you love most in the world suddenly becomes a stranger?
Adam and Jenny's world is falling apart. Their dream of attending college together away from home quickly becomes a nightmare when Adam begins hearing the voice of the Snow Queen. Adam's startling transformation from popular drama student into a withdrawn, suspicious stranger leaves Jenny frightened and confused. How can the person she loves most in the world suddenly become someone she doesn't recognize? As Adam drifts farther and farther away into the Snow Queen's mysterious world of ice and snow, Jenny believes she must fight to bring him back or risk losing him forever.
Vividly narrated by Adam and Jenny, the struggle to understand the impact of Adam's mental illness, forces both characters on a journey of self-discovery that leads to understanding about life's uncertainty, the power of first love, and the pain of letting go. Drawing on elements of The Snow Queen fairy tale, Losing Adam is a unique combination of drama and romance.
Re-imagining Famous Fairy Tales
Audrey Hepburn said, "If I'm honest I have to tell you, I still read fairy tales and I love them best of all." So I'm in good company when I say that I love fairy tales and often look to them for inspiration in my own writing. This is especially true in my new YA/NA novel, Losing Adam, which is partly inspired by The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.
The first time I read The Snow Queen as a little girl, I was intrigued by the Snow Queen's haughty beauty and her mysterious world of ice and snow. Like all good fairy tales, there was a compelling dichotomy between the Snow Queen's cold cruelty and the warm and loving friendship between Gerta and Kai. And when Kai is spirited away by the Snow Queen on her silver sled, the fight between good and evil ensues.
What stayed with me most about The Snow Queen, however, was the somewhat unusual circumstance of the girl rescuing the boy. Gerta's bravery, her determination to help her friend no matter what the cost, was first instance of female bravery I encountered in my reading life. Encountering numerous obstacles in her journey to rescue Kai, Greta faced each one with courage and intelligence.
Rereading The Snow Queen as an adult I admired Greta even more, and, inspired by her example, I began to create my own heroine. Like Greta, my character would risk everything for love, even the wrath of a queen with ice around her heart. In my novel, Losing Adam, the Snow Queen is a metaphor for mental illness, and the obstacles my characters face are different, but like Greta and Kai they too are on a journey. And in true fairy tale form, appearances are deceptive. In both stories, what begins as a straightforward search and rescue mission, eventually transforms into a search for self that culminates in an understanding of life's uncertainty. How one moment you can hold spring and all if its infinite possibilities in the palm of your hand, and the next you're trying to grasp a handful of snow as it melts through your fingers.
Aside from thematic similarities, I hope that what Losing Adam has in common with the original tale is complexity. With each reading, the reader will come away with fresh insights into the story and is characters. And most of all, I hope Losing Adam will resonate with readers, and that it will find a place in their heart as all the best stories do.
Student Health Services: Please come in, the sign on the door said. Had that been there the last time? Come in – come in, come in, come in. The words circled slowly in my head without coming to a stop. The receptionist handed me a blue form. Please record your name and student number it said in tiny black letters. The words to an old Clash song rang in my head: Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double…
The receptionist took in my unwashed hair and dirty jeans. "Don't worry, all of your information is kept strictly confidential."
I rolled the pen back and forth between my fingers. "Does that include my parents?"
"Yes, of course. We won't release your personal information to anyone without your permission." I wasn't sure I believed her, but I filled out the form anyway and headed towards the waiting area. There were a couple of other students there coughing their lungs out, so I sat down as far away from them as possible.
"Adam Kane," the nurse read off a shiny plastic clipboard. The way she said my name made me feel like I had burs underneath my skin. I didn't want anyone looking at me and wondering why I was there.
The nurse looked expectantly in the direction of the waiting area. Stand up! My body responded to the command in slow motion. Finally, I raised myself out of the chair and followed the nurse down a long hallway painted pea soup green. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. I counted fourteen cracks in the linoleum floor before we stopped in front of a small office. The nurse waved me towards two squat looking plastic chairs. I sat down in the one closest to the door and watched the nurse arrange a sheet of crinkly white paper on the examining table.
"She hates you," the static whispered. "She wants you to die."
"Stop," I said.
"I'm sorry. What did you say?" the nurse asked.
"Nothing," I said. "It's nothing." Didn't she hear it? Of course she did, she's just pretending. That's why she was looking at me like that; disgust seeped from the pores on her face making her skin shiny, almost wet looking.
The nurse pointed to the crinkly paper. "If you'll hop up on the table for me please, I'm going to take your blood pressure."
"Don't do it," one of the voices whispered. "It burns, it burns," said another.
The nurse patted the table like you would a puppy. "It'll just take a minute."
I moved towards the table, but when I tried to climb onto it, my arms and legs turned to Jell-O. The nurse grabbed hold of my arm and hoisted me into place.
"There now, can you raise your right arm please?" Her voice was pointed and sharp, like the needles lined up on the table across from me. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to push the voices back into the static. At first that's all they'd been, a fuzzy kind of humming, like when the TV cable went out, except that the sound was coming from inside of my head. But then the static began to take shape. Tiny pieces of black fuzz slowly bonding together until the voices were strong enough to make themselves heard over the steady hum in my brain. I hated the voices. Keeping them quiet sucked the energy from my body until I felt as thin and weightless as a shadow.
I became a writer because the world inside my head was so real and vivid, sometimes more so than the outside world. In some sense I have lived parallel lives, present in my real and fictional existence in different ways. A lover of faerie tales, fantasy and gothic horror, a thread of the mysterious or unexpected runs through all my work. My dream is to find readers who will gather round and let me tell them stories that will become a part of their life the way they have become a part of mine.
My short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, The Storyteller, A Fly in Amber, New Plains Review, Silly Tree Anthologies, and in the e-zines Les Bonnes Fees, The Devilfish Review, Rose Red Review and 87 Bedford. An excerpt from my forthcoming YA novel Losing Adam won first place in the Young Adult category of the Seven Hills Literary Review contest.
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Prize/Genre: Contemporary/New Adult , Gift Card
Judy Thomas April 8, 2018 at 5:28 PM
I love that cover!
Elizabeth Robinson April 8, 2018 at 6:39 PM
Love the cover. Thanks for the giveaway.
Cindi Knowles April 9, 2018 at 12:27 AM
Sounds like a very intriguing book. Good luck on your tour. Thanks for the opportunity 💕
Siddhi Shailendra Nigam April 9, 2018 at 7:01 AM
Love the cover!! Thanks for the giveaway ♥️♥️♥️
Stacey Smith April 11, 2018 at 8:09 PM
sound deep. love the cover.
Jerry Marquardt April 11, 2018 at 10:50 PM
I would like to give thanks for all your really great writings, including Losing Adam. I wish the best in keeping up the good work in the future.